THE BATTLE-LINE OF LANGUAGES IN
WESTERN EUROPE
A Problem in Human Geography More Perplexing Than
That of International Boundaries
BY A. L. GUERARD
ANY of THE GEOGRAPHIC'S read
ers, I am sure, have gone through
the following delightful experi
ence:
It is night; it is cold. The train pulls
up at a little station which marks the
boundary between two central European
states. Out of your compartment you
tumble, with bag and baggage-the easy
going days when a perfunctory glance
sufficed to satisfy a douanier that you
were not a professional smuggler have
been swept away by the Great Storm.
Papers are scrutinized, your luggage
opened and searched, with more efficiency
than gentleness. A thick bundle of greasy
notes changes hands. Hastily you pack
your scattered belongings again; kneel on
the bulging, gaping, recalcitrant suitcase;
stuff into your pockets the odds and ends
you had nearly forgotten, and hasten,
grumbling, to the train, to resume your
uneasy slumber.
There you may dream of a country
where it is possible to travel for days,
instead of hours, without having to face
such barbarous and unnecessary discom
fort.
THE TRIALS OF THE LINGUISTIC
BORDER-LINE
Now, the ordeal of the flesh, when
crossing the customs line between two
European countries, is but the symbol of
a worse ordeal, both of the flesh and of
the spirit, when crossing that invisible
and very real line, a linguistic boundary.
When you reach a country where your
speech no longer has currency, it is your
ideas that have to be dumped out of their
familiar container, your language. Then
you must pick them up again in a jiffy,
and wrap them somehow, anyhow, in a
new container, of different size and
shape-a foreign language.
No wonder if your most delicate
thoughts look crumpled after going
through such a process; if some that you
cherished are left behind in the rush; and
if you unwittingly appropriate others, not
because they are desirable but because
they happen to be right at hand.
This linguistic ordeal is one that many
of us try to avoid, either by staying at
home or by keeping to those well-traveled
routes where, thank Heaven, "English is
spoken and American understood.'
We are all familiar with the story of
Babel and the confusion of the tongues
of men.
But few people in America
thoroughly realize what the curse of
Babel means in terms of discomfort and
even of danger.
Language remains the worst frontier in
Europe, the most complicated, the most
impassable, the hardest to adjust, the most
fertile in conflicts and hatred.
A NEW LANGUAGE EVERY FEW MILES
We are accustomed to the broad lines
upon which our Western civilization is
built; from ocean to ocean and from
pole to pole only three languages prevail:
English, Spanish, and Portuguese. (The
local survival of French in Quebec and
in some of the West Indies hardly affects
the general truth of this statement.)
In northern Asia and eastern Europe,
from Vladivostok to Brest-Litovsk, and
from Archangel to Sevastopol, a single
master key opens the civilization of 150,
ooo,ooo men.
But in western Europe
(which, for the purpose of this article, we
shall define as the whole of Europe minus
Russia) the geographical domain of even
the major languages is, according to our
American ideas, pitifully small.
The largest, the area of German speech,
including the present Republic, German
Austria, parts of Czechoslovakia and
Switzerland, and a fringe in Belgium,
France, Italy, and Poland, is smaller than
our single State of Texas.
What are 200 miles to the modern